When we invited a friend to visit us on Cape Cod, he replied, “I’d love to but how the dickens do you drive around those rotaries?“ Initially we laughed. Our friend, after all, was a New Yorker, accustomed to the predictability of the grid system. Nevertheless, he made a valid point. Not only does New England have more rotaries than other parts of the United States, but Massachusetts leads the state list with 47 rotaries. Cape Cod has four: The Airport Rotary in Hyannis, The Hyannis West Main Street Rotary: The Bourne Rotary and the Orleans Route 6 Rotary.

Perhaps that is a reflection of our British heritage, for the first rotary, or traffic circle, appeared in Bath, England, in 1768 and only later spread to the Continent. By 1905 the American William Phelps Eng encouraged the construction of small circular junctions such as Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. With the subsequent popularity of the automobile and the lagging creation of traffic lights, hundreds of larger rotaries appeared in the United States, which enabled motorists to make high-speed merge and weave maneuvers before crossing to one of several intersecting roads.

“Rotaries, or traffic circles as they are formally known, traditionally served as an effective means of keeping traffic flowing when four or more roads intersect,” explained Glenn Cannon, director of Technical Services for the Cape Cod Commission.

Ask any Cape resident what that means to them, especially while driving around the Barnstable Airport Rotary or the Bourne Bridge Rotary during rush hour or in the summer months. Inevitably the uncontrolled and unpredictable whirl of traffic creates anxiety and often a white-knuckle grasp on the wheel. Unlike intersections with traffic lights, little attention is paid to the rules of the road. Massachusetts law demands that cars entering a rotary yield to those already in the circle, but the constant stream of traffic in that circle often makes that difficult. Drivers consequently barge in wherever they can and are immediately beset with other concerns. Are the cars in the outer circle turning off at the rotary’s next exit? Are they about to cross into inner circle? Or visa versa?

One result has been congestion and a high accident rate – not only here on the Cape but throughout the nation. That, in turn, has discouraged construction of rotaries since the 1950s. To replace them civil engineers have since recommended roundabouts, small one-lane traffic circles. Several of these have recently appeared on the Cape, such as the one at the junction of Bearse’s Way, High School Road and Bassett Way near the Hyannis Youth and Community Center and the one at the junction of Cotuit, Harlow and South Sandwich roads.

Those do not solve the problems of swirling traffic at the Airport Rotary or the Bourne Rotary. Thanks to a recent study by the Cape Cod Commission, a two-stage reconfiguration plan will be initiated within the next several years at the Bourne Rotary to ease traffic congestion.

If only one could look to Washington, D.C, (which has 34 traffic circles) with similar optimism, but at this writing that seems unlikely since the big wheels in Congress continue to spin round and round on key issues of the day. In the meanwhile, the ordinary citizen must rely upon ingenious weave and maneuver tactics to keep his life moving along at a decent speed.